Tips and tricks to get the most out of your CarPlay experience

For the vast majority of people, CarPlay is a must-have. Apple’s in-car experience provides a vastly superior infotainment experience than most options from carmakers. There’s quick access to your favorite apps, integration with Siri, seamless connectivity, and more.

Here are some of my favorite tips and tricks for making sure you’re getting the most out of your CarPlay experience…

Customize your CarPlay apps and Home Screen

A lot of your favorite apps are probably available on CarPlay, but that doesn’t mean you want all of them on your CarPlay Home Screen. Thankfully, it’s easy to adjust those options.

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone
2. Tap “General”
3. Tap “CarPlay”
4. Tap your car’s name and choose “Customize”

Here, you’ll see a full list of all the CarPlay apps on your phone. You can simply tap on the red minus sign to hide apps from appearing on CarPlay.

You can also rearrange your CarPlay Home Screen while on this page of the Settings app. Simply drag the apps into your desired order using the three lines on the right side of the app icons.

CarPlay wallpapers

While you can’t use any photo as your CarPlay wallpaper, Apple does offer a selection of pre-installed options.

1. Open the Settings app on CarPlay itself
2. Select “Wallpaper”
3. Choose your desired wallpaper and tap “Set”

Apple adds new wallpaper options to CarPlay from time to time, but there’s still only a limited number of choices available.

Wireless or wired?

CarPlay works both wired and wirelessly, depending on your car’s make and model. Wired CarPlay generally provides a faster and more reliable experience. While using wireless CarPlay, you might experience some latency when doing things like changing songs and accessing Siri.

Here’s my strategy:

• I use wireless CarPlay for quick trips around town when I’m getting in and out of the car multiple times of the car as I run errands.
• I use wired CarPlay for longer road trips where I’m in the car for extended periods of time.

Again, your mileage may vary depending on your car. There are, however, ways to bring wireless CarPlay to any car. My personal recommendation is the CarlinKit 5.0 adapter, which converts your car’s wired CarPlay implementation to a wireless experience for under $60.

Dark mode

CarPlay is available in light mode and dark mode interfaces. In the Settings app via CarPlay, you can choose between three options:

1. Light
2. Dark
3. Automatic

I use the automatic setting, which switches between light and dark modes based on time of day and other exterior lighting factors.

Driving Focus mode

One of the most important benefits of CarPlay is that it enhances in-car safety by discouraging you from picking up your phone. First, there’s the Driving Focus mode. This blocks incoming notifications, messages, and calls so your focus remains on the road.

You can customize the Driving Focus mode via the Settings app on your iPhone. You can choose to allow notifications from specific contacts and enable an automatic reply feature that tells people who text you that you’re driving. You can also choose to enable Driving Focus when connected to CarPlay automatically.

Announce Messages

Announce Messages is a popular iPhone feature that works with Siri to read your messages aloud. Then, you can choose to reply to that message using your voice. The feature works with Apple’s Messages app as well as third-party apps like WhatsApp.

1. Go to Settings > Siri & Search > Announce Notifications on your iPhone
2. Turn on Announce Notifications and select supported apps
3. In CarPlay, make sure Announce Messages with Siri is enabled in the CarPlay Settings app

SharePlay

If you’re like me, you prefer to have control of the music while you’re driving. However, if want other people in your car to be able to contribute songs to the queue, CarPlay has you covered.

You’ll see a SharePlay icon in the upper-right corner on the Apple Music Now Playing screen. By tapping on this icon, you’ll be prompted to generate a QR code that others can scan. Once they scan this QR code, a pop-up will appear, informing you that someone is interested in joining your SharePlay session.

Once that person joins, the other people can contribute songs to the queue, see what’s currently playing, and rearrange the queue – even if they don’t have Apple Music.

Wrap up

Are you a CarPlay user? If so, what are some of your favorite tips and tricks? Let us know down in the comments.

The elephant in the room, of course, is Apple’s highly-anticipated next-generation CarPlay platform. Unfortunately, there are very few details available on when that will actually materialize.

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